[unconed]

Mnemonic methods where you remember elaborate stories using your own language are actually kind of a bad idea, though the intent is good. The idea is that you remember a concept better when there are plenty of connections with other things in your head. This is true, and this is why mnemonic methods work very well for beginners, especially people who are getting nowhere on their own.

However, in order to become fluent in a language, you need to think in that language, which means you need to build up concept associations in that language. By teaching yourself e.g. English mnemonics when learning Japanese, you are irreversibly tying your Japanese knowledge to your English, and giving yourself a handicap in acquiring fluency.

If you instead remember a word by memorizing a specific use / context of that word in the target language (and add some visual imagery to that for good measure), then this gives you memory associations that will actually remain useful as you become a better speaker. This is why immersion works so well: your entire learning is grounded in the necessity of speaking with and understanding the culture you are living in. If you need to eat, you will develop a food vocabulary very rapidly.

Mind you, I speak about four languages, am fluent in three and grew up naturally speaking two, so maybe my brain is also wired differently than most.

[thras]

The mnemonic method being referred to is aimed as specifically learning written Japanese. It is not about learning words. It's about learning kanji.

The problem is that Japanese has the most complicated written language in the world. It has two alphabets and a set of many thousands of symbols (kanji) borrowed from Chinese. Learning spoken Japanese is an entirely different undertaking than learning written Japanese.

You can be completely fluent in Japanese and still not be able to read a newspaper (this may actually be more common than not).

[pradocchia]

I learned Kanji (or Hanzi, as it were) by rote practice and careful attention to the calligraphy of each stroke. It turns out each stroke has a rhythm, and the sequence of strokes have a composite rhythm unique to the character.

Rhythm is an important mnemonic aid. The Homeric epics are poems because poetry has meter and rhyme, and people needed that to remember the whole thing. Same thing with Kanji.